


Heartbreaker

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Crying, Dismemberment, Emotional, Eyes, Fear, Fear of Death, Gen, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss of Control, Sadism, Scars, Superpowers, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 23:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: The city is in ruins. The sky is stained. She came to kill life on Earth. But she made one fatal mistake, one Steven can't forgive.She hurt Connie.





	Heartbreaker

* * *

The sword was gone. Her shoes were off and her feet were cut from running across the ground. When Connie finally stumbled into Steven’s arms, he picked up the panicked girl and pressed her head into the crook of his neck. Despite it all, she had made it through. She coughed and sobbed from the smoke of the city ruins, trembling against Steven like a mouse. She was safe. She didn’t have to fight any more. Steven closed his eyes and held Connie as softly as he could, running a hand down her back.

“Connie - “

It was then that he felt the scarring, and he already knew that the corrosive pinkness had found its way onto her skin. The white blouse was burned from the flames and shredded across Connie’s shoulders and spine from where the acid had been deliberately thrown. Steven’s fingers traced softly over the lines of tissue, and even through her fright Connie still winced in pain. The lightest touch was enough to wrack her body. Steven had seen what it had done to the world, and he knew that if there had been even an ounce more that he would be feeling bone. He had to close his eyes and force his legs from collapsing. He couldn’t lose Connie now, not like this. Not to _ her _.

From behind him, he heard the hollow cackling in the background. It crackled like dead twigs underfoot, growing closer and closer, blowing through the smoke until Steven could sense her. The other side of the clearing was barred. Connie paused, then shrank in Steven’s embrace as she saw her. Steven turned his head.

Blood Diamond stepped all the way through the ashen cloud and grinned at the two teenagers. Her arms and legs untangled themselves, and she twisted her hands to reveal her open palms, a smile spreading over her face. 

“I think you taught me something after all,” she giggled.

Connie heaved against Steven; the boy could feel her fear tearing her body apart. The Gem wriggled her fingers in joy, turning her head all the way around as she surveyed the ruined town. Her joints squeaked against each other like rubber, fibrous and unnatural, as she practically danced towards her prey.

“Perhaps I want to spend time here after all. Savoring the moment is a pleasure I haven’t had the freedom to experience in quite a while. I’ve just been so busy! But extinction at such a personal level - that’s new to me! And so much better on this planet. Isn’t that right?”

Something started to pop inside Steven’s body. It wasn’t like the crack that the injector had created, but more like the feeling when the Cluster burst - a thousand voices and a thousand cries traveling down his bones in a united fracture. Blood Diamond curled her digits in joy and wriggled as she extended one leg at a time, slinking through the embers.

“You know the best part about this body?” Blood Diamond hissed, her pupils shrunken and moist. “I get to hold you and watch you from one side, and end that little pebble without even watching. I can hear her just fine, after all! Such a delight, with her screaming and your expression… There just aren’t the words for it. How could I have lived without it? One limb at a time, one bone at a time…”

She broke into a fit of giggles again. Connie squirmed and started to push against Steven, her breath catching up as flight kicked in. Steven tried his best to hold her, but Connie was breaking into a panic that Steven had never seen before. The fear of the Injector fluid, the fear of that pain, was enough. The teenage knight dug her fingers into Steven’s torn jacket and shook her head.

“Steven, I can’t,” she whispered. Tears cleared pathways down the dust on her cheeks. “It hurts, it _ hurts, _ please - I-I… I want you t-... I don’t want to feel it, I don’t, please…”

The request was too much. Blood Diamond could hear Connie’s begging, and Steven felt the twisted pleasure emanating from her laugh. She could easily grab both of them and separate them, he knew. She could do anything she wanted with them. But she was waiting, waiting to see if Steven would end Connie’s pain to prevent the inevitable. The Gem was prowling around the sacrifice, anticipating the hands, the twist, the crunch, the wail, all the new tortures of the heart that she could only get from their love.

Steven felt his stomach literally turn. Connie’s crying stopped for just a moment, and time crept to a halt. The boy’s head throbbed in the temporal space, seconds on a clock passing by, moments he couldn’t recognize. His whole body suddenly started to ache, but his temples burned most of all, a band of pain across his skull. As the world stood still, he could swear he saw pinkness reflected in Connie’s face.

Blood Diamond’s entire body paused. Steven could sense it in a way he had never sensed it before. He could see clearly, everything that was happening behind him, the impulses in her body. The light from her gemstone that composed her form reached out in infinite directions, running through the monster’s body, and Steven knew each and every point of refraction in her limbs. He didn’t have to look, but he did, twisting himself to stare at her face. Blood Diamond was sneering at him with confused disgust, but even before he saw her expression, he could feel the change, the impulse from what he could only call her soul as that same disgust turned into confusion, confusion to surprise, and, satisfyingly, to fear.

He lowered Connie to the ground with one arm, and extended his hand with the other. In real time, Steven knew how fast it looked like his body was going, and how slow he truly felt. Connie would be safe - he didn’t have to touch her to make her light enough to drift away from him. Everywhere the light touched was Steven’s. Fear had left him. The boy had one goal now, and Blood Diamond knew.

The Gem snarled and tried to pull back to punch him, swirling a hand in front of her body to protect her. Steven’s fingertips warmed as his shield emerged from his palm. A leyline of energy wrapped around his torso and up his arm, and shot the shield instantaneously through the air like a discus. White light glowed around the weapon as it passed through at unfathomable speed, whirling into Blood Diamond’s palm before she had even finished reeling back.

Steven could feel the light. His heart that had been broken and panicked moments ago beat in his chest with a familiar beat, a slow rhythm. He could feel the light of his shield tearing apart the physical nature of Blood Diamond’s limb, buzzing through her glove like lightning. Before he dispersed his weapon, Steven furrowed his brow and twisted the shield, and in a chain reaction of photons, Blood Diamond screeched as her arm shattered from wrist to socket, ripped asunder and shredded. Physically, Steven felt each and every strip of his enemy shredded by sheer will alone. In his heart, it was all he wanted to do. It was calming. It was furious. 

As Blood Diamond stumbled back, the calm that had overtaken Steven molted into what he knew his destruction had desired to be all along. A vengeant growl rumbled up into his mouth as he planted his heels against the earth. Thousands of layers of sediment shifted below him as he launched himself into his enemy’s twisting form. She screeched as he jumped into her and grabbed her by the throat with a white-hot hand. Her eyes bulged from her head, one hand flailing now as the stump on the other side sizzled with latent energy.

She opened her mouth, but Steven squeezed her neck tighter. He floated above his planet’s surface and watched as Blood Diamond teetered in confused agony. Nothing mattered now. She was light, just light, and he could control every part of her that he wanted.

**You hurt her. I want you gone.**

Whether or not the words came out were irrelevant. Blood Diamond understood everything that he wanted her to understand. Steven took his free hand and slammed it against the heartstone on her chest. Physical matter was nothing to him. The Gem tried to open her mouth for one last hateful splutter, but she wouldn’t get it out. He wouldn’t let her. Steven’s fingers squeezed with just a fraction of the force he knew he could have used. It was enough to make the shattering slow, painful, so that Blood Diamond could feel each crack just where he wanted her to. In the moment, Steven knew that she felt what Connie was going to feel - all the pain, all the fear, all the merciless cruelty reflected back in his eyes. The invading Gem’s face bulged for just a moment more before the burst.

Explosive rays of magenta powder shot from the core where Blood Diamond had once been. The shockwave shook the ground and the echoing boom blew back the smoke from around them. Sparkles of light drifted down around Steven as he blinked away the dust. The weight of the gemstone was nothing in his hand. Time returned to him. The teenager let himself float back down to earth, the massive red rock dead and cracked in his hands.

When he turned to Connie, he smiled, satisfied for the moment. Connie was crouched on the ground, and when he faced her, the girl pushed herself upright and away on the ground, staring back with the same wide eyes he had seen before. 

Steven faltered. The enemy had been defeated. There was nothing left for her to fear, and yet she looked at him so strangely. Steven extended a hand, and Connie flinched at the mere motion. The girl shook her head, her lips trembling and her arms reaching to hug herself across her chest.

“What did she do to you?”

“...Connie?”

“What did she do…”

Connie bit her lip and tried not to cry. Steven lowered his hand and watched her. He was confused, lost, standing and staring as he clutched the heart-shaped Gem in both hands. The boy opened his mouth to try and say something, but no words were right for now, not when he didn’t know what was wrong. He had done it. He had saved her. The acrid pink clouds swirled around the sky above them, and a hollow wind passed over the ocean beyond, filling the space with silence. Steven looked down at the stone and rubbed his thumbs over the heart’s surface. He saw where his cheeks were covered in dust, where his hair had been blown by the wind. He saw the tears in his birthday jacket from the earlier fights when the Crystal Gems had been by his side. Steven saw his own eyes and blinked, staring at the heat of the rose-colored irises looking up at him, at the sharp corners of his own black pupils.

**Author's Note:**

> Once more, the art featured here is by @Katie_TheSlayer on Twitter, used with permission. She posted a sketch and a crack theory and, well, how could I resist?


End file.
